Exploration
by Tornintopeices
Summary: In which a much younger Arthur goes searching for the perfect hiding place and ends up finding a creepy oversized lizard.


Do not ask me how or why I wrote this. I just did. I fear it may be totally awful but anyway.

I own three made up characters (Arthur's nurse and two drunk guards). I do not own the dragon, little!Arthur, Uther or the Merlin universe. Though if anyone wants to give me little!Arthur as a Christmas present I won't say no.

Arthur is running away from his nurse. She's been his nurse for all seven years of his life so she knows all his usual hiding places; the armoury (though he's a little to big now to fit behind the shields), the kitchen (Lots of nice big cupboards to hide in) and various rooms in the upper half of the castle. This is why he's heading down to the bowels of the castle; to the dungeons, the crypts and the cellars. Well the dungeons actually, the crypts are creepy (they were during the day, let alone in the evening) and the cellars have cobwebs.

He doesn't even really understand why he has to have a bath this evening, it's winter and it's cold. There isn't a banquet on tonight and he's already had three baths this week. He's not even **dirty**. Besides, only girls like Morgana bathe every day.

There aren't any prisoners to guard so the guards are drinking lukewarm ale and playing dice. It's not seemly for a prince to creep but Arthur has got good at creeping (Camelot has an abundance of secret passages and odd rooms) and so he managed to get past the guards with little to no effort. The cells are locked and besides, why would he want to hide in there, but there is an interesting passage leading downwards. The only thing standing between him and what might well be the perfect hiding place was an old iron door set in a grate.

At that moment one of the guards, both of whom were by now more than slightly drunk, got up from the crude table to go to the privy, tripped and crashed into their upright weapons and discarded armour. Arthur quickly shoved open the door, its squeal of protest masked by the cursing and crashing from the guards. The passage was dark and there were no torches, but Arthur wasn't scared of the dark, he'd mastered that fear years ago and continued down the long flight of stairs heading downward into the very heart of the earth, or so it seemed to the seven year old prince descending them.

The stairs stopped rather suddenly and Arthur found himself standing on a ledge looking out on what had to be the biggest cavern in the world. It was bigger than the banqueting hall _and _the council chambers together. Arthur grinned, this was the _perfect_ place to hide from his nurse, and he could climb around on these rocks for ever and surely never get bored.

So wrapped up in dreams of hours climbing around here was Arthur that he didn't notice the metallic jingle of chain links or the rushing of wind. In fact he didn't notice the dragon until said beast landed in front of him. At which point Arthur let out a **very** un-princely, rather high pitched, 'eeep' and cringed back a bit. Because it was all very well to boast to Morgana that when he was grown up he would slay dragons like the hero's in the stories but coming face to face with one was a whole different story.

"Be at peace little Prince. I will not hurt you"

Arthur tightened his jaw and stood up straight, meeting the dragon's golden eyes.

"Why have you come?"

"I was exploring" Because saying 'I was running from my nurse' was most certainly not princely.

"Have a care little Prince. You have a great destiny in front of you." Arthur decided then and there that this cavern might not be such a good place to hide. Caverns were all well and good but caverns with creepy giant lizards who didn't make any sense weren't half as fun. The fact that as he made a tactical retreat (whatever that was, it sounded an awful lot better than running away) the dragon started chuckling strengthened Arthur's resolve never to hide _there_ again.

He needed to tell his father about it. Surely his father wouldn't let the dragon stay there. After all, all the stories said that dragons were evil.

So it was that Arthur approached the door to his father's rooms with trepidation, there had been a council meeting that evening and that always left father in a bad mood. But he needed to tell him about the dragon so he knocked, then he knocked again because his first knock had sounded pitiful.

"Come" Uther's voice boomed and Arthur could only hope that some day his voice would sound that commanding. With difficulty Arthur opened the door and stepped in.

"Arthur?" Uther frowned, it was too early for Arthur to come in here with his nurse to say goodnight.

"Father. There's a dragon in the dungeons"

I have a feeling this may totally suck. Especially the bit with the dragon.

Reviews would be nice. Really.

Torn.


End file.
